therealbig3 wrote:freethedevil wrote:Well here's issue one. You're holding an accomishment that curry contributed to against him without isolating how much he had to do with it and how much was the basis of his team.
The 15-16 warriors didn't even play nearly as good as the 19 raptors did withotu kawhi. Whatever impact mesuarement u go by curry's wins added ranges from 22-25 wins(and it is harder to lift 40-65+ than 10-40)
PLayoffs can be used as evidence curry dropped off from his rs self, but u cannot suddenly attribute the regular seaosn to curry's teammates and then change your tune in the playoffs where the struggles are on curry.
No, I think leading a dominant RS is notable, but its translation to the playoffs is the most important thing. The Warriors have underachieved offensively compared to their RS performance with Curry on the court in all but one PS (2017). You can dismiss KD as not being as good as Curry, but that doesn't mean he wasn't an excellent player in his own right...pretty sure everybody agrees on that point at least. And I think painting broad strokes of who KD is as a player to define his importance to GS specifically misses the underlying reason why he made them so devastating in 2017. The Warriors only obvious weakness from the previous 2 years was the lack of an elite ISO scorer in the half court (Curry struggled in this role in both 2015 and 2016, there's no two ways about it) and a reliable deep threat to hit the open 3s that Harrison Barnes kept missing in the 2016 Finals. The playoffs are mostly about matchups and not having exploitable weaknesses. KD basically added to their strengths while taking away their one major weakness. That's what made him so valuable to GS, even if his impact numbers historically don't rank him where his reputation suggests. And if you look at Curry's performance with and without KD on the court, there's evidence that KD's presence helped Curry a lot too.
This is fair, which is why I'm slanting my focus specifcally on 13-16 and 19 here as opposed to 17 and 18 which is
a. The greatest two year playoff stretch
b. arguably the most impressive collection of wins(blowing a title level team ou of the floor in the 17 cavs and then beating arguably the greatest non title team ever in the 18 rockets.
c. When all the pieces were healthy, they _did_ operate at goat offense level in 17 AND they were able to do that WHILE maintaining one of the greatest playoff defenses in history.
That second part is something I feel you may be ngelecting here. Teams will shift focus away from offense to defense and such, so if overall the teams looking amazing, but one side doesn't look as amazing, I'm skpetical that's neccesary an issue. Against the rockets especially, the warriors were leaning into defense and iso alot more than small ball offense.
Overall, I'd say the warriors death lineup is defense orientated outside of curry I think.freethedevil wrote:And they would have won quicker if not for an iggy injury. Also, the rockets played 70 win basketball when cp3 and harden were in the lineup.
Finally curry had just come off an injury and youa ttributing "well they were taken to game 7" to curry, when we've already seen currys warriors beat comparable teams(like 2016 okc) withotu durant.
Finally, ignoring that curry had an injury which acorrding to medical professionals takes months to recover from shoots a bullet in your point. The 17 cavs were a title level team and with a healthy curry the warriors destroyed them.
And if u wanna focus on offense, then its only fair to focus on opposing defenses.
Here's how PRIME DURANT and a healthy curry fared against the best defense they encountered:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/2017-nba-western-conference-semifinals-jazz-vs-warriors.html
Lets make believe durant creates for others like curry does, curry shot 7 points better on identical volume.
Impact metrics, net on/off, regular season impact metrics, regular season on/off and even simply replacing "assists" with "scoring oppurtnies created" will tell you that curry was the far more valuable piece of the 17 run.
So if curry's injury coincides with them being taken to 7 by the rockets, and curry, with a similar injury to his 2018 one, in 2016 is able to lead the warriors past a comparable team to the 18 rockets in the 16 thunder. It becomes dubious to be pinning curry as --inconsistent-- and blaming him for the warrios, not being 'invincible' when curry's health correlates with the warriors playoff success more than durant's presence on the team does. Even the 16 finals vs 17 finals as a feather in durant's cap stpos really working if you realize that the warriors had the cavs dead to rights before a bunch of events which didn't occur in the 17 finals(even ignoring that curry di dindeed have an injury which medical professionals say takes months to recover and which he ended up getting surgery for).
This is the issue with only looking at team level results when we have ways to isolate induvidual impact.
Curry's playoff aupm as of 13-15 is exceptional, so are his rs stats. A gutted 19 warriors nearly beat a raptors team that themslves,
-> played at a 60 win rs pace without their best player
-> was able to make the second round an dthe confernece finals before swithcing out a bad coach for arguably the best one and switching out an ineffecient chuker for a defensive anchor.
-> Beat a bucks team which up until they ran into the raptors were outdoing the 91 bulls in terms of competition adjusted srs during the first two rounds and posted two historically dominant regular seasons in 19 and 20.
ALl in all, curry's warriors, durant-less, generally do nearly as well as durant's warriors with curry hobbled and yet you're pinning the warriors not being "invincible"(because stacked teams most definitely do not struggle against good comp on repeat and three peat campaigns, lets ignore the kareem=magic lakers, the first three peat bulls, the second three peat bulls, the russell celtics numerous game 7's and game 6's ect, ect) on curry, a player with loads of evidence of induvdiual impact, fantastic granular stats, playoff and regular season, ect, ect as opposed to
Durant, a player with very little correlation between his box stats going up and his impact increasing, whose never increased his scoring volume when his usage has ticked up and whose apex from an induvdiual impact perspetcive has been rivalled in a wide avriety of metircs(actually outdone in the playoffs) by pre-17 westbrook.
Outside of a low usage 2012 run and a 2016 series where the spurs decided to focus the brunt of thir attention on westbrook(and he racked up an incredilble 54 assist percentage as his ts went down and all of his teammates ts skyrocketed), durant's effiency plummted against good defenses in a way akin to robinson in the playoffs.
Iggy's value shouldn't be that high on a team with Curry, Durant, Klay, and Green.
[b]Well its important to note, that players become a lot more neccesary aginst the very best opponents. If they were playing say the pelicans, and there was a massive drop off, that would be one thing, but you're facing chris paul+harden+a defense nearly as great as the warriors(and note chris paul was arguably playing better than harden those playoffs when healthy). You said matchups matter, iggy was the guy the warriors were asking to pick up harden,
It's just not a great reason why a team with such a collection of talent can't beat another team with the same amount of MVP-level players and half as many All-Stars.
well lets not act like chris paul missed the whole series, he miassed less than 1 and a half games of a series. Igyy missed 4 games. And it sounds silly to compare Iggy's value to the Warriors as their 5th best player to CP3's value to the Rockets as their 2nd best player (or best, depending on how you view his impact relative to Harden's).
Well there's two things here, if you are going to say that chris paul was harden+ then it starts becoming harder to put this as some kind of black mark.
As I see it, KD is a harden level player in the playoffs. Draymond's value is almsot entirely baked into that _atg defense_ which the rockets were basiclaly matching. Outside of his defense, klay's value is entirely based on shooting/spacing which...
the rockets had more of.
I'd argue outside of curry and chris paul, the teams were evenly matched.
So if we're making this about talent, and the warriors are probably beating the rockets if everyone's healthy, that means that curry, in one of his weaker induvidual playoff runs(even compared to say 15 or 19) is providing lift at a similar value to chris paul who piror to injury was arguably operating at his playoff best.
Doesn't that make for a strong argument that curry is better than CP3 is?
Keep in mind, curry's essentialy exceded this feat in 2016, utterly outclassing durant and westbrook(better scoring-far better scoring+superior to far superior creation) with the same injury.
What this suggests to me is that curry's, absolute floor, as a playoff player, is peak cP3. Given we've seen curry play signfiicantly better than this when healthy, I think you'd be hardpressed to argue cp3 is really a match for curry.
And they STILL would have lost to a CP3-less Rockets team if they didn't have the worst shooting performance of all time in game 7, a game the Warriors barely won. The fact that the Rockets were playing them evenly is kind of my point...they didn't have the talent the Warriors did, which means they either overachieved, or the Warriors underachieved.
Again, see above, I dont buy the rockets-cp3 and the warriors-curry are necceasrily a mismatch. I might pick the rockets actually. You can bring up all stars but ultimately harden is arguably =/> durant, the rockets have better shooting/spacing, the warriors are a smidge better defensively.
You could bring up that chris paul porvides more value defensively than curry, but i think thats arguably offset by harden being the primary point of focus for the warriors defense.
So to me, I see this as a even match with curry at least matching chris paul at his arguably best performance wise.Given the fact that the Warriors offense wasn't exactly lighting it up throughout those playoffs, I think it's at least a combination of the two. I'm not impressed by a team more talented that barely squeaks by an opponent they should beat handily. Your points about previous teams are noted...they SHOULD be put in the proper perspective. But you also have to view how the player's individual performance affected that drop-off. Curry not only missed games in the 2018 playoffs, he also underperformed as an individual, and it correlates with a team underperformance. To give him a pass for this doesn't make a lot of sense. This isn't a case like Jordan where you're bringing up series in which he wasn't playing his best ball but his team dominated anyway...Curry wasn't playing his best ball and a lucky break is why they won. There's a difference.
Well I dont think the 91 bulls, who i belive you're referring to, are what you should beusing here, that situation is a lot closer to the 17 warriors, first title, dominant throughout irregardless of their best player's fluctuations in scoring volume/efiency, weak/injured competition until the final(tho the lakers had injury issues the cavs didnt).
I think if you're going to look at the 18 warriors, the proper comparison would be the 92 bulls. An even stronger regular season team than the 91 bulls.
I'd say they were more --talented-- relative to the 92 knicks outside of mj than the warriors were relative to the rockets outside of curry. As far as regular seasons go, the knicks were miles below the 18 rockets playing at a 52 win pace via srs and winning 51 games.
Against this team, Jordan's effiency dropped to below league average(curry was +2rTS vs the rockets). Jordan scored 30 points in 43 minuites as opposed to scoring 27 points in 38 minuites
The knicks ended up taking the 67 win bulls to 7. Did Jordan really do better than curry here? Aren't the 92 bulls more dissapointing? Can't this be put on jordan's effiency dropping 4 points while his volume didn't really increase on a per minuite basis?
Lets say, that the lakers win three straight after going 2-1 down to the 42-40 rockets, is winning in 6 against them really better than being taken to 7 by the rockets? Both magic and kareem dropped off from the rs.
The 18 rockets taking the warriors to 7 is actually pretty par for the course. Teams usually peak at their first title/contention run, and then the following playoffs prove to be more difficult irregardless of what happens in the regular season. That's largely because teams build themselves towards to stopping the guys at the top. The rockets were built with the singular minded focus of stopping the warriors. Hell, even --losers-- like say the 19 bucks see the same thing. In 19, its quite arguable that only the raptors could have stopped them. Outside of those last four games, they played like an all time rs team, and were posting a point differential which even the 91 bulls didn't manage in their first 10 games.
There was probably only one defense in the league with any hope of stopping that offense(outside of maybe the jazz whose offense wasn't near good enough to compete anyway) and the team people thought prepared a nightmare matchup for their defense(the celtics) were easily adjusted for and decimated.
They get even better in the 20 regular season, add wrinkles with brook lopez, matthews and robin lopez, see their best player improve as a passer, and defensively get more versatile with wes matthews. And then the Mimi heat nukes their offense and defense simultaeously, they don't look spectacular against the magic, given how much trouble they were given by bam, its hard to say they wouldn't have faced simialr issues with the raptors, the lakers, or even a healthy version of the sixers.
The league shifts faster than induvidual teams do. Teams have never gone two playoff runs withotu facing a signficant challenge. I'm not even sure there's an example of a two year run where a team wasn't taken to a game 7. The rockts were a historically rare combination of talent, paired with the perfect complimetary pieces and a scheme built around playing the warriors better than anyone else.
The warriors still survived and I dont think its clear outside context neccesarily hurt the warriors more than the rockets.
The warriors were an unprecedented collection of talent, but it is also unprecedented to survive a team like the rockets on a title defense.
If that's undeperformance, I challenge you to find me three examples of title defenses where teams did not comparably underperform at least once. There's plenty of examples of teams doing worse than the warriors, like say the 15 spurs.
Finally, talking about induvdiual makes looking at creation, as opposed to assists, extremely pertinent. Here's an example of why. Take a look at this boxscore from one of warriors two wins against the raptors:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201906020TOR.html
23 points on bleh effiency and only 4 assists? If we use this to measure his induvidual performance, then, wow "Klay carried, look at how much help curry has, curry awful when it matters most" seems fairly reasonable. Yet, according to Ben,
Curry created 17 Scoring oppurtunities.
Note that he only turned over the ball, once.
Replace whatever number occupies curry's assist box with the number of scoring oppurtunities he created in any series facing a good defense(let alone an atg one), how comfortable do you feel saying nash and cp3 have a comparable track record when facing adversity?
Keep in mind, the reason the raptors shifted to that box and 1 against steph, was because the warriros had an orating of 116. The box and 1 was an ATG defense's ace in the hole, and it really didn't work with the raptors really only surviving on the basis of the warriors defensive regression and depth.
You're brining up curry's teammates in relation to the warriors team offense(not overall goodness), so its worth keeping in mind where each of his teammate's is brining offensively.
Draymond at his apex was a bad shooter hitting average effiency on low volume because defenses left him open. He can finish lobs and he passes very well and can bring the ball up and push the pace. Going off three year pipm, dray provided signifcantly more value defensively than offensively. Klay shoots historiclaly well, moves well, can finish at the rim if you draw away the defending big and/or non-elite rim protectors.....uh.... *crickets. Iggy provides some secondary playmaking, and shoots well enough on low volume while left open.. Harrison barnes shoots well.
There's three questions here then
1. How much of what I listed is tied to curry? Because if curry is really creating like peak magic in his bad looking playoff games via the defensive attention, then just about all the offensive skills i listed can be tied to curry. Can you really be sure klay isn't just kyle korver+defense without curry?
We've only seen klay without curry in the non-durant days in 5 playoff games. All against bottom 10 defenses, the first of whom won 41 games, the second who won 42 games.
You say, curry's teammates tend to step up, but how are you measuring this, their scoring effiency? Because if thats whats driving this, then how much of that could potentially be attributed to Curry simply trading jordan-esque scoring for Magic-esque creation?
Also, you should note, the metrics which suggest draymond is ~ Curry also say that klay thompson and co are worth a bag of chips.
I'm also not sure why you're comparing Durant and CurLry when that's not what I was doing. I know Curry's impact metrics are much better historically. It doesn't change what Durant provided to that team specifically.
Re: Curry's injuries, isn't this a reason why he should be docked a bit? If he's consistently getting injured and can't play at 100% and this affects his performance to the point that his team ends up underperforming significantly, this is a difference between him and say, LeBron. It actually sounds very CP3-like.
[b]I mean you can subsitute lebron for bird-like, nash-like, durant-like, ect, ect. Curry's injury history for his prime is two ankle sprains, and a messed up hand. We've also seen three entire 4 series playoff runs without anything significant happening. We've --never-- seen that from chris paul. 'Consistently' injured seems like a stretch. From 13-19 he's had two major injuries with which we haven''t really seen evidence of long term effects.I'm also saying that the 2017-2019 Warriors didn't do much to answer my doubts about Curry that came up in 2015 and 2016, because they were so much more stacked relative to their competition. And even with the most stacked team of all time, they still had notable struggles. I don't think I'm walking away from that stretch and saying "Wow!"...I'm saying "meh".
I mean, lopping 19 there seems wierd. I'd contend they were only stacked in 17 and 18 and well, the only 'notable struggle there' came from a team better than just about any opponent faced by a defending champion save for the 72 lakers who beat the bucks anyway. In 19, they were shallow, and defensively mediocre prior to durant's injury, and they struggled against a similarly diminished version of that contender for 4 wins, and then ended upwinning very decisively after the 'reason' for the warriors being rididuclously stacked went away. Then came the raptors.
The 16-18 raptors made the second round three times and made the conference final once, played 50-60 regular season basketball.
-> They traded a terrible coach for arguably the best in the league
-> One of their role players turned into a all star(siakim)
-> They added one of the best defensive anchors in the league
-> Their bench got better
-> They traded an ineffecient chucker for a more playoff resilient version of durant
And then achieved proof of concept beating a bucks team that, up until they ran into the raptors were playing like the 91 bulls.
I'd say missing 1 and a half games of klay cancels out a quarter of durant.
The warriors came wthin a possession of game 7 against this team with curry creating like magic in his worst game of the series(bbll reference wise) AND shooting very effiecnetly on very high volume and posted a great relative offensive rating both pre-and post the box and 1 and with and without klay and durant.
Is there a comparable example of overcoming adversity you can think of for chris paul or nash?
How about, coming off an injury, outclassing arguably peak durant and westbrook and taking out a team that played
-> 65 win basketball at full strength
-> literally had just smashed a team that played [b]70 win basketballHow about beating a 57 win team as you,
and this is assuming curry created nothing off the ball, post an extremely effecient 25 point triple double against a good defense?
On broad strokes the nuggets series seems as impresssive, aguably more so than what you could argue is chris paul's apex(beating the spurs in 15) and I think considdering creation, curry arguably played better.
The 19 finals is something you only really see from the cream of the crop. The very best you can find from Bird, Magic, Jordan, ect.
Jordan's very best gets an edge defensively, magic is the rare example of player with multiple examples of that kind of elevation but Bird? He has his series gainst the sixers in 81 and the lakers in 84 but frankly considering creation, I think you could probably argue they weren't as good as curry's 19 finals and they weren't clearly better than how he did in the 16 wcf.
Outside of that, its a pretty big drop off from what I recall.
Go down a notch from there and you get nash whose peak, taking the spurs to 7 in 05, frankly isn't as impressive on a team level AND i dont think he really played as good given the scoring gap.
I think that if you were to go series by series and look at most of these players, you'll find, their track records as indivudal performers in the playoffs aren't as impressive as reputation suggests.
Jordan's repped as the best playoff performer ever, but the only three series I can think of where he really performed at a level seperating him from you run of the mill top 10 candidate are the 89 ecsf vs the knicks, the 88 first round vs the cavs and the 91 finals vs the lakers.
Russell is treated on this board as this metronome of atg-impact, but using your rationale here the celtics outperformed relative to talent in the playoffs were 69, 62 and 64
With shaq, despite 00-02 being nearly as hyped as mj's 91-93, they arguably underperformed once in each run outside of 01 and shaq saw his effiency go down against the best opponents typically with the exception of the 94 finals, the 96 ecf and the 04 finals, none of which are even in the time frame he's getting hyped over..
[/b]
freethedevil wrote:Magic and Kareem were in a way weaker west than curry's west or lebron's east. Possibly the weakest confernece realtive to era in nba history.
That didn't stop them from
-> Losing to a team with a loing record in the first round(right after a fairly dominant title)
-> Getting swept by a 'normal contender' in 64
Can you explain why being taken to 7 by the rockets, losing to the cavs, or being taken to 6 by the cavs and memphis is as bad as losing to a 40-42 team in the first roudn right after you win the title.
Where is the dissection of Magic as a overrated system piece?
You brought up the bulls. Th 91 Bulls were incredibly stacked realtive to competition. Jordan's scoring, defense, creation all went down from 89 and 90 both in terms of volume and effiency and yet they went from valiant losers to title leavel teams/contenders to blowing out almost all of their playoff games.
They ripped the pistons to pieces with jordan imitating klay thompson in the first two games of the ecf. jordan shot 54% against the sixers, commited defensive breakdowns twice a game against hawkins, barely handled the ball and the bulls hit them out of the park.
And yet, with in 92 and 93 a team that ripped playoff competition to shreds without jordan needing to be spectacular for much of the postseason were taken to 7 by the knicks and were taken to at least 6 by three of four opponents.
Mind you the regular season bulls srs skyrocketed from 91 to 92, they won 7 more games, adn yet they went from lapping the field to being taken to 7 by a team you'd be hard pressed to argue was as good as the 18 rockets.
Why is Curry's team having a cloe series against the rockets an issue but we look the other way with regards to magic johnson and jordan?
Should I bring up bill russell whose teams would have identical srs's in the rgelar season and then would suddenly be taken to 7 or 6 by teams that supposedly shouldn't be within distance of them according to the rs?
Curry's pre-kd warriors, were so stacked at their height in 2016 they....
were on their way to blowing a 2-0 lead against the 43 win trailblazers before curry was subbed in.
The 94 bulls nearly knocked off a team that came a few possessions within a title and then after losing rodman played at a 53 win pace prior to jordan's arrival at full strength.
Then jordan comes, reacclimates, they add a replacement for grant in rodman, they win 72 games and....the bulls nearly blow a 3-0 lead to the supersonics.
Fyi, the bulls came very close to losing in 95 AND 96 posting very nice regular seasons.
Why?
The 81 Lakers-Rockets series was a best of 3 series, and it was a pre-prime Magic. It's different than a best of 5 or best of 7 series and it's different than talking about a prime Curry.
Sure, let's examine those series in the proper light though. I have no problem with that. But I don't see as much evidence that they struggled individually the way Curry has, and my main issue with Curry (and has been a consistent point of mine) is with regards to his offensive GOAT candidacy, which is what we're really talking about here. That's really why he's in the conversation right now. And I don't see another offensive GOAT candidate that has struggled to lead a dominant PS offense the way Curry has.
Well okay, I dont know kd+dray+klay=iggy [b]offensively are clearly better than the 80-85 lakers cast if we're only talking offense. I feel you may be conflating their overall value with offensive value? Because holistically, the results are pretty fine.
Kareem shot like around +10 rTs from 77-87 and could obviously create from the post, cooper wasn't just one of the best shooters relative to the time, he also, unlike klay, was a very good passer. Finally you have worthy He averaged 10 assists when magic was out while mainatining his assist:to ratio, worthy was able to up his scoring and creation without his effiency dropping when magic and cooper went off.
In the warriors rotation, dryamond and iggy and klay can create for others but KD's really the only player not named curry who can create his own shot and creates for others(albeit his creation's on the low side for a player of his calibre). Everyone in the peak lakers rotation could do both. KD's probably better than kareem at that point, but does that really make up for everything else?
In 19 games(which is a comparable sample size to the 18 playoffs), the lakers offense fell from +6 to +2. For reference, during the 17-19 playoffs the warriors offensive rating with durant on the floor was +2 and with both curry and durant +10.
I dont think there's much reason to think the warriors, when they were 'dissapoiting', were really comparable--on offense-- to those magic teams.[/b]
We can bring up teammates, but other GOAT candidates have elevated their individual performance and have gotten the most out of their teammates to the point that they were able to dominate offensively despite struggling teammates (LeBron and Nash come to mind). We also know that Draymond Green has notably tended to step up his performance in the PS, especially in Curry's absence, and for all the criticisms of Durant, he's played exceptionally well in his role for GS. Klay Thompson has ups and downs, but is basically the same player as he is in the RS. Curry's core teammates more or less play the same, if not better...it's Curry that sees a decline in his play, and this is consistently leading to an unimpressive ofIfensive performance (for offensive GOAT standards).
Saying the pre-KD Warriors without Curry came close to blowing a 2-0 lead until he subbed is one way of saying that they won a playoff series and built a 2-1 lead without him.
Pre-KD, the Warriors were 4-2 in the playoffs without Curry, and were overall 9-3 in the playoffs between 2015-2019 without him. Their performance was actually extremely impressive, and it puts these impact stats into context.
Well first off, for clarity the impact stuff suggests the warriors were a 48 win team without curry in 2016 and a 42 team without curry in 2015. Going 4-2 against literally .500 competition is
A. Not outside of the scope of what you'd expect from a 48 win team
B. A really small sample to conclude curry's supporting cast plays at a different level from the playoffs comapred to the rs.
In addition to that, you need to keep in mind that _seeding_ is a large part of why thats very impressive. The warriors are unlikely to be getting a top 4 seed without curry. If the warriors are in a dogfight vs a slighly above .500 team in the second round, how well do you think they're doing against the spurs, the thunder, ect?
If we take curry off, they're likely to be lower seeded and then they're likely losing in the first round. Saying, ah well they were two games of the wcf, well they were two wins off the wcf because they ran into two .500 teams largely because they were the #1 seed.
And them building 2-1 lead on the second team is nice for sure, again tho, if they're losing that lead without curry, the series happening to be in the second round doesn't --really--suggest they're much better than average does it? The only reason the team they were facing got there in the first place was because chris paul broke his hand. The m going 3-1 on a 41-41 team may suggest they're better than 48 wins, but them, a 42 win team going toe to toe with them suggests they're worse.
I'm not really seeing strong evidence either way that their regular season play is misleading here.
First of all, there's legitimate question as to whether or not Draymond Green is actually the MVP of the Warriors, since so much of his and Curry's minutes overlap,
Alright lets say the metrics are right. Cuury is incredibly impactful, dray is more impactful. Dray's the real mvp. Okay....so what?
Metrics which suggest the question is legitmate also suggest that everyone not named curry or draymond on the warriors was a system player, replacable and worth a bag of chips in a trade. Even if draymond was better than curry, it would not change that, the warriors did not play like a superstacked team without curry prior to kd's arrival.
I understand why people are drawn to 'best player on team' thing, but functionally speaking, if i dvided draymond's goodness into three less extra good players that acheive the same result, would that suddenly make curry better or worse?
Finally, I've said this before, but --we have seen-- curry be incredibly impactful --without draymond-- in 13 and 14 and I'm hard pressed to see chirs paul's achievements as clearly more impressive than what curry was doing on the mark jackson iteration.
and it demonstrates that this is an extremely talented supporting cast that is capable of winning playoff games (was 2 games from the conference finals without Curry or KD in 2016, dominated their way to a 1st round win and a blowout game 1 win against NO in 2018 without Curry) without their best player and can adjust.
Well there's multiple issues here.
I've already tocuhed on how just saying 'well the team almost reached the conference final' doesn't really work because their ability to do so was based on beating up on downright average opponents, [b]thanks to regular season seeding that they needed curry to acheive+an injury to another team's best player, something that you really cannot credit the warriors cast with.
But now I really dont understand what you're doing brining up 2018 here. The 2016 warriros did not have durant or curry. the 2018 warriors did have durant.
the 2017\-2018 warriors are arguably THE gold standard in playoff success for one year and two years and durant was only part of the supporitng cast during the playoffs, for those two years where the warriors established themselves as the greatest team ever. And this is with curry injured for one of those postseasons.
There's really no sense trying to tie the 2016 evidence with the 2018 evidence unless you also want to tie together their results. To be blunt, what the warriors can do without curry and with kd really tells us nothing about what thhey would do without curry AND kd which is essentially what the warriors were over two years.[/b]
So the numbers that paint them as an average or barely above average supporting cast really needs context, because they've proven themselves in the playoffs without Curry or Durant.
okay, i was using those numbers very specifically in regards to non 2017 and 2018 seasons, because again, 2017-2018 GOAT results, quite liteally.
I do not understand why you are trying to draw conclusions about 2015, 2016, 2019, from 2018 and 2017.Also, I vehemently disagree that the Bulls almost blew a 3-0 lead in 96. Losing 2 games after going up 3-0 is just as easily explained by complacency rather than almost blowing it and underperforming.
Now suspend pippen for game 6. And lets have kukoc and longley pick up a back injury limiting them in game 7.
How 'comfortable' does that victory feel now? Draymond's suspention really has nothing to do with curry, so if you'e going to treat the 96 bulls who were only 3-2 up without external intervention as fundementally different than the 2016 warriors who were 3-1 up without intervention, does it really make sense to tie that to curry?
freethedevil wrote:This is fine, as long as you recognize we can drag down Magic Johnson, Micheal Jordan, Shaq, Russell, Lebron, Tim Duncan, hakeem, and every player known to man as having a cp3 peak if we apply the reasoning you're applying consistently.
As far as the offensive anchors go, there's a consistent track record of Jordan, LeBron, and Magic leading dominant PS offenses and individually elevating their games in order to do so, overcoming the struggles of any teammates along the way or enabling their teammates' performances. I find that lacking in Curry's PS resume, which is why they are on another level in terms of peak relative to Curry or CP3 imo.
[bThat's fine, but there are many steps between magic/jordan and chris paul I think. Like, larry bird. Larry bird's effiency and volume plummet vs good defenses in the rs and against postseason defenses. Bball refeence scanning actually makes curry look quite a bit better given his scoring seems to match and he has a better a:to ratio --despite-- creating far less off ball and being far less likely to have his creation tracked by assists since bird is getting almost all his creation via direct passes. You could list defense, but holistically curry seems to edge things here in the regular with curry at 22-25 on better rs teams while bird is less impactful per ben's bpm, pipm, or his best wowy samples(45 win team to 61 in 85-86 irrc). Irrc they've led similrly strong playoff teams with similarly strong playoff offenses of +5. What makes bird more, reliable?
What makes west more reliable? Robertson? Shaq? KG? ect, ect. I feel you are grossly overestimating just how 'perfect' the track records of these players you're comparing curry to. Playoff elevation, is the exception, 99% atg seasons have players and their teams perform far worse against a great opponent at least once during their playoff run.
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But I think your post was great, definitely has me chewing on a bunch of things. I'm also not familiar with AUPM, can you explain?
AUPM is a box-stablized plus minus variant ben developed to measure the playoffs. It rturns out 13-15 curry, registers a +5.6 despite exlcuding curry's +6 17 playoffs and potentially similarly high 2019.
Nearly half of that sample is based on 13 and 14 curry, but thais three year stetch beats out the best of wade, kobe, dirk, nash, and chris paul ect, ect.
https://backpicks.com/2018/06/10/aupm-2-0-the-top-playoff-performers-of-the-databall-era/
And yeah, this discussion has been refreshingly stress-free diespite the high volume of words exchanged
